Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen by Pierre Goubert

He would never forgive either Paris, the nobles, or the common people. These trials shaped the future character, behaviour, and mode of thought of the young king. This marked the beginning of the long civil war known as the Fronde, in the course of which Louis suffered poverty, misfortune, fear, humiliation, cold, and hunger. Louis was nine years old when the nobles and the Paris Parlement (a powerful law court), driven by hatred of the prime minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin, rose against the crown in 1648. Anne of Austria, who was to blame for this negligence, inspired him with a lasting fear of “crimes committed against God.?

He once narrowly escaped drowning in a pond because no one was watching him. Although he was saluted as “a visible divinity,? he was, nonetheless, a neglected child given over to the care of servants. At the age of four years and eight months, he was, according to the laws of the kingdom, not only the master but the owner of the bodies and property of 19 million subjects. Louis was the son of Louis XIII and his Spanish queen, Anne of Austria.

Internationally, in a series of wars between 16, he extended France's eastern borders at the expense of the Habsburgs and then, in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), engaged a hostile European coalition in order to secure the Spanish throne for his grandson. King of France (1643–1715) who ruled his country, principally from his great palace at Versailles, during one of its most brilliant periods and who remains the symbol of absolute monarchy of the classical age. Born September 5, 1638, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Franceīyname Louis The Great, Louis The Grand Monarch, or The Sun King, French Louis Le Grand, Louis Le Grand Monarque, or Le Roi Soleil

Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen by Pierre Goubert